Hey gang, time once again for one of Emily’s patented guest posts! Enjoy!
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When last we spoke, I was (bravely, brilliantly, intrepidly) beginning to run again after a long break, and talking as much about my nerves as my feet. I was getting ready to say f the haters, and hit the trail, and power through a lifetime of doubts and insecurities, and RUN.
And I did.
And I DID. I have been accomplishing goals all over the place and improving my time and my butt and smiling smugly at other people who feel bad about not getting to the gym more. I have become That Person.
And a lot of it has absolutely sucked.
Here is a brief list of things I’ve cried about while I was running:
1.) My shins hurt.
2.) My ankles hurt.
3.) The girls’ track team from my high school ran by and I felt weird.
4.) My knees hurt.
5.) I can’t run as far as I want to.
6.) Correcting my stride made me think about my mom correcting my posture when I was little.
7.) I stopped running because my shins hurt and now I’ll never run again.
8.) That other person is running better than I am.
9.) I’m crying and that means I’m a whiny crying baby.
10.)I have a stitch in my side.
11.)I remembered something someone said once and I don’t have anything to distract me because
I’m running.
12.)My iPod died.
13.)That goose looked at me weird.
The thing that I’ve found about running is that you have to be present in your body, and that that is an incredibly vulnerable place to be. Yoga, the other place where I focus entirely on my body and what it’s doing, has structures in place to help you forgive yourself, cushion that vulnerability, and make you feel safe. Running is brutal. Running doesn’t care about your feelings, and there is no nice hippie lady there to help you breathe and watch your form and correct you.
I had somehow set it up to be like the training montage in a teen comedy, where there would be a shot of me stumbling along the trail, and then something by the Cars would play, and there would be a dissolve to me, radiantly sprinting along the trail to prom, where the guy I’ve had a crush on for years would take off my glasses (This Emily wears glasses.) and we’d make out, and then I win the Boston Marathon and we get married. The hard part, the only hard part, was starting. Once I started, everything was going to be cake. I am, in many ways, an idiot. It was all hard.
What did happen, though, is that right in the middle of one of my little crying parties, I fixed my stride.
When I say that angels sang, the heavens opened, and the vase became two faces, I’m not exaggerating. I have seldom felt such joy in my body as when I realized what running was really supposed to feel like, and got to actually sprint down the trail, shooting out radiance in all directions. I felt amazing. AMAZING. I was the best runner in the world! Yay me!
Then, the next day, my knees hurt and my sports bra was itchy and I cried about crying.
And the next day, I did it all again, and I will continue to do it all again, because the minutes that it feels amazing are worth all the time I’ve spent whining, crying, and flopping around. I closed the last post with a line from Wayne’s World, and I’ll close this one with something my other favorite movie, Annie Hall.
This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, my brother’s crazy; he thinks he’s a chicken.” And the doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?” The guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.”
That’s pretty much how I feel about running; it’s totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, but I’ll keep going through it because, well, I need the eggs.
Emily Brown is the proud owner of two aching feet, a Tumblr, and an unhealthy fascination with Alan Tudyk from Firefly. She’s written all sorts of things, for all sorts of people, and has been friends with Mark for longer than either can adequately explain. Follow her on Twitter at @missbrowntoyou
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